Midnight Special

Running time: 111 minutes. Rated PG-13 (violence).

Are we entering an era of CGI minimalism? I sure hope so. “Midnight Special” is an old-school, sci-fi thriller, its special effects doled out sparingly in the story of a young boy with inexplicable powers and the adults who are, variously, trying to protect him or use him for their own ends.

You may feel echoes of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “Starman,” but writer-director Jeff Nichols has ultimately crafted his own unique twist on the genre.

He wastes no time on exposition, throwing us into the action with a desperate man named Roy (Michael Shannon) and his accomplice (Joel Edgerton), on the lam after abducting Roy’s son, 8-year-old Alton (Jaeden Lieberher), from his adoptive parents at a religious cult known as the Ranch.

Kirsten Dunst.Ben Rothstein

Reasons for the abduction gradually become clear — or semiclear, anyway — as we witness the uproar in its wake. The cult’s oily pastor (Sam Shepard) is on a mission to retrieve the child who he sees as a prophet and government agencies, surveilling the Ranch, see as an intelligence threat.

Nichols, who utilized young actors so effectively in his 2013 indie “Mud,” has another impressive find in Lieberher, who blends a preternatural calm with the bewilderment of a normal kid in frighteningly abnormal circumstances. You never forget the physical toll of Alton’s powers; while the light shooting out of his eyes resembles an image from one of his comic books, he’s moaning in pain as it’s happening.

The rest of the cast is equally terrific, with Shannon and Kirsten Dunst anchoring the drama as Alton’s tormented parents. At times, the film feels like a metaphor for having a child with a terminal illness, as Roy and Dunst’s Sarah helplessly watch Alton become depleted by his own powers. They’ll do absolutely anything to save him, but how do you rescue a child from a condition that doesn’t make any earthly sense?

Adam Driver (“The Force Awakens”) brings his trademark quirk to the role of a wonkish but humane NSA agent, achieving a few moments of levity in a film that’s otherwise unrelentingly tense, and the versatile Edgerton is likably workmanlike in the role of Roy’s best friend Lucas.

“Midnight Special” isn’t perfect: The plotline involving the Ranch is oddly dropped, and there’s so much mystery surrounding Alton you can’t help wishing for a bit more back story. Ultimately, though, Nichols delivers the moment we’ve been hoping for — and if his eleventh-hour reveal falls short of mind-blowing, it’s still a compelling meditation on what might be out there that we don’t yet know or understand.